Self-Awareness: The Cornerstone of Personal Growth
Self-awareness is the concept of focusing attention on ourselves as a means of gaining further understanding of our emotions, thoughts, actions, behaviors, and motives. Then, armed with that understanding, we can make improvements and adjustments that allow us to grow in our personal lives.
Self-awareness serves as the foundation of personal growth, as it is the awareness of self that provides us the crucial information about our patterns of being that hints at those things, we need to alter in order to transform for the better. The following are some ways self-awareness is crucial to personal growth.
Identify Strengths and Weaknesses
Self-awareness involves developing an understanding of your thoughts, emotions, actions, behaviors, and motives. As you become clearer about the underlying forces driving your choices and behaviors, you begin to understand those areas that are strengths and those areas that are weaknesses.
This information is valuable because it allows you to see those areas you can use to your advantage as strengths and those areas that you can improve upon in order to get better and grow (Schoenwald, 2019).
More Emotional Control
One facet of self-awareness involves delving into our emotions in order to develop greater knowledge and understanding about how we feel, what triggers our feelings, and how those feelings influence our actions and behaviors. Having this knowledge empowers us to have greater control over our emotions versus letting our emotions control us.
When we know what triggers certain emotions, we can take steps to avoid those triggers or put measures in place to help us deal with those triggers. Similarly, when we understand how certain emotions influence our behaviors, we can then catch ourselves when we are experiencing certain emotions before we engage in potentially negative or harmful behaviors (Verma, 2020).
Accomplish Goals
As we grow in our understanding of ourselves, we can gain critical information that can help us reach our goals. When we understand our actions and behaviors as well as the underlying motives driving the things we do, we can tailor our actions and adjust our motives in a manner that better helps us accomplish the goals we desire to reach.
Also, as previously noted, when we know our strengths and weaknesses and have more control over our emotions, we are in a better position to reach our goals because we aren’t held back by our weaknesses or behaviors/actions that would work against us (Verma, 2020).
Confidence
The more we know about ourselves, the more confident we can be, and confidence is essential to overall growth and development. If we don’t believe in ourselves and our abilities, we cannot begin to move forward in our lives. Self-awareness can highlight our strengths and show us things about ourselves that we can be proud of which can serve as motivation for us to work towards our goals, and for us to continue on a path of continual progress and growth (Verma, 2020).
Self-awareness is a key first step in gaining necessary insight about the self that helps us grow and evolve for the better. Via the continual pursuit of self-awareness, we can regularly gain knowledge about ourselves that will help us make needed adjustments and believe in ourselves in a manner that helps us in our pursuits and endeavors in life.